Captiva winner of 'Best of the Best Resotred Beaches' contest

By Shannen Hayes

                To celebrate 10 years of honoring Best Restored Beaches, the American Shore & Beach Preservation Association (ASBPA) recently hosted a “Best of the Best Restored Beaches” online contest asking people across the nation to vote for their favorite restored beach.

                Captiva’s beach was declared the winner of the ‘Florida Gulf Coast Beaches’ category after garnering more than 10,000 votes of the 27,000 that were cast.

                “I think that it really is a testament to our community spirit,” said Captiva resident and business owner Sandy Stilwell. “We sent it out to our friends and family and asked them to vote and as a team we did it.”

                Navarre Beach, in northwest Florida, took the top community beach category and earned the highest overall votes. It also was the only other winning beach in the state.

                Since all the beaches already have been honored for their success, and survival, this contest wasn’t about which one is the better restored beach, but simply the ones that did the best job to get out the vote.

                Another motivation behind the contest was to remind people that so many of his country’s favorite beaches have been restored. It was a way to highlight the importance of sound costal management, as well as the need to maintain our costal infrastructure to keep it healthy and wide for all users.

                For the past 40 years, beach restoration has been the preferred method of shore protection in coastal communities. Beach restoration is the process of placing beach0quality sand on dwindling beaches to reverse or offset the effects of erosion.

                The main reasons for restoration are storm protections, habitat restoration and recreation. During economic hardships, the beach can become and even more desirable vacation destination. Each year, governments take in $320 in taxes from beach tourists for every dollar it spends on beach restoration.

                In addition, well over half of the nation’s gross domestic product - $7.9 trillion – is generated in 673 counties along the oceans and Great Lakes, according to the NOAA’s National Ocean Economic Program.

                Winning beach communities will be honored at a special ceremony during the 2013 ASBPA National Summit, to be held next year in Washington D.C. Complete descriptions of each of the breaches that were in the running for Best-of-the-Best beach are online at www.asbpa.org.